Miss Neilans said the more they made at Bermondsey had been running in the minds of members of the League for nearly two years. There had been a great shriek in the Press and elsewhere about vitriol, which was as unjust as it was ridiculous. The tube she carried contained nothing more dangerous than photographic chemicals, which could do no more damage than produce a black stain. The Women's Freedom League never had intended to injure individuals and never would intentionally. The women identified with this movement had never failed yet in anything they had tried to do, and they would not be foiled in the future. They had among them members of the League who were prepared if necessary to do 10 or 15 years in prison for the good of the cause.

Mrs Chapin, who on rising was received with loud applause, then proceeding to deal with the part she played at Bermondsey on the polling day. She was, she said, very far from being a war like character: in fact, she was too much of a dreamer to hanker after active service at all. But the battle of votes for women was one that was going to be fought out to the finish. It was perfectly logical for them to protest at elections and say they would not put up with the tyranny of the present Government.

Mrs How Martyn announced that she had received a letter from Mr Baker, solicitor to the League, who expressed the opinion that for the first time members of the League had committed an indictable offence which could not be dealt with at the police court, so that it would have to go for trial. She went on to say that in one respect they made a mistake over Bermondsey. They had thought that if they succeeded in spoiling one voting paper it would inviolate the election. They know better now.

Mrs Chapin, the militant Suffragette who made an attack on a polling place during the Bermondsey by-election last Thursday, was committed for trial by the Magistrate at the Old Baily today, and the double change of unlawfully meddling with the ballot box and causing grievous harm to the presiding officer.

Mrs Chapin broke a bottle of champagne containing corrosive acid on a ballot box with the apparent intention of destroying the ballots which the box contained. The acid, little or none of which found its way into the box, spattered upon election officials, one of whom were badly burned.

Miss Alison Neilans was also committed for trial charged with a similar attempt to destroy ballots in another booth at the same election.

At the Old Bailey today, Alice Chapin (45) was indicted for unlawfully interfering with the ballot-box during the Bermondsey election by introducing divers liquid chemicals into it for attempting to destroy the ballot papers and for assaulting George Thorley.

Accused pleaded not guilty.

Counsel said defendant threw a chemical liquid into the ballot-box, and 80 ballot papers were nearly destroyed. Some of the liquid splashed on to Mr Thorley's face, that gentlemen being the presiding officer. One of Mr Thorley's eyes were injured.

Mr. George Thorley said Chapin raised her band and brought it smartly down on the mouth of the ballot-box. There was a slight crash as of breaking glass, and witness felt the splash on his face and in his eye. He went to Guy's Hospital. His sight, which has been affected, was improving.

Cross-examined – witness did not believe for a moment that defendant meant to injure his eye.

Further evidence was given that all the papers affected were deciphered.

Mrs. Chapin was found guilty of interfering with the ballot-box and of common assault.

Sentence was postponed until the conclusion of the trial of Miss Nielans in connection with the Bermondsey incidents, which is now proceeding. 

Mrs Alice Chapin, the militant suffragette, who injured a polling clerk at the Bermonsey by-election when she smashed a bottle containing corrosive acid on a ballot box was sentenced in the Old Bailey Court today to seven months' imprisonment. She was convicted on the charges, three months of her punishment being for interfering with a ballot box, and the rest of the term for assault on a polling clerk.

Miss Alison Neilans, who made a similar attempt to express suffragette sentiments at the by-election, but with less serious consequences, was also convicted and was sentenced to three months' imprisonment.

Alison Neilans who was sentenced to three months' imprisonment in connection with the Bermondsey ballot-box, was released from Holloway. Three months in that school for women politicians, learning the working of man-made law under conditions which have aroused the just indignation of every civilised country, would, we thought, have sent her back to us broken in body, but not in spirit…

There is no poetry in the early morning – only grim reality; and the crowd of us who watched for the gate to open were not a little sad and not a little dispirited. And it was our prisoner who cheered us up. The gates open at last, and swinging down the yard came Alison, a little thinner but brave and young and dauntless, with the light of battle in her eyes. "I'm keener than ever," was her greeting; and, drawing us across the road, she led our shouts of greeting to Mrs. Chapin, who still remained in the black castle of North London…

Proceeding, Miss Neilans said that in undergoing this term of imprisonment she had only done what any women, given the opportunity, would do if she had this cause at heart… After this, her third and longest term of imprisonment, Mrs Neilans said that she had absolutely the same opinion of the Rt. Hon. (Coward) Gladstone as before she went in, but the officers in Holloway Prison had shown her as much kindness as lay in their power….

After forty-eight hours without food the Governor had come to her and said: "You have now been forty-eight hours without food, so I must have you fed tonight if you do not give in."

When the doctors entered her cell they had given her the choice of weapons – nasal tube, stomach tube, or feeding-cup. Which did she prefer? Although she heard the stomach-tube operation was the most dangerous, she choose this method in preference to the nasal feeding.

She was held down in the chair by two women, their fingers were forced between her teeth, her head thrown back, the tube was gradually forced down her throat, and the feeding commenced. Although she did not go so far as to describe the operation as torture, she did say it was the most unspeakable outrage that could be offered to anyone.

Justice is higher than mere morality, and the test of our justice is the way we treat those who are held to be of little esteem. The solicitation laws can only be carried out by riding carelessly over the principles of law. They depend upon lack of proper definition, lack of proper evidence, and their foundation is the double standard of morality."

The prostitute is the scapegoat for everyone's sins, and few people really care whether she is justly treated or not. Good people have spent thousands of pounds in efforts to reform her, poets have written about her, essayists and orators have made her the subject of some of their most striking rhetoric; perhaps no class of people has been so much abused, persecuted, hated, or, alternatively, sentimentalized over as prostitutes have been, but one thing they have never had yet, and that is simple legal justice."

Discussion of the modern, moral and political atmosphere was indulged in by almost all the speakers at a Hotel Cecil luncheon in London on October 24, which was held under the auspices of the Equal Political Rights Campaign Committee.

What is happening today," said Miss Alison Neilans, "is that the older people are corrupting the young man by suggesting to him that there is something inherently indecent about the exhibition of women's knees. The young people themselves do not care tuppence about these things. It is the older women, who have not been emancipated from the period when we wore skirts touching the street, who are deliberately trying to put into the minds of the young man of today that if a woman has a short skirt, or anything at all unusual about her, she is trying to provoke his passions and make him a bad man."

"Although man has reached the industrial stage," Mrs. Pethick-Lawrence said, "women – especially the married women – is still living under the feudal system, and for protection and maintenance depends almost entirely on her overlord. We have all been reinforced in our position of citizenship, but what we have gained by the vote we demand in other realms of public life."

(For twenty-two years Secretary of the British Association for Moral and Social Hygiene).

An important section of the work of the Alliance deals with the Equal Moral Standard. The Commission on this subject has adopted the following statement of the principles which govern its work:

"That the same high moral standard, based on respect for human personality, sexual discipline and the recognition of responsibility towards the race, should be established for both sexes. The principle thus expressed, and all the legal, educational, social and other consequences inherent in it, should be recognised by the laws and observed in their application.

Consequently, traffic in women should be considered as a legal offence and punished as such.

The regulation of prostitution and all measures of exception taken against any particular class of women should be abolished."

Dr. Paulina Luisi the Chairman of the Commission in her report to the Paris Congress in 1926, put the subject most clearly when she said: -

"Of all the laws, rules and regulations which down the centuries have helped to place women in a position of inferiority, none has been so powerful in creating in the spirit of men and peoples a sentiment of scorn and contempt for our sex is the degrading idea of a double standard of morals. It is from this that there has sprung that worse attack on women's dignity, the regulation of prostitution."

Some people may wonder why the Women's Movement lays such stress on this question. There are two main reasons. The first is that when we challenge the double of masculine privilege and irresponsibility towards women.

The second is the state recognition of prostitution and provision of brothels is the most brutal expression of the subjection of women.

This year Miss Alison Neilans completes twenty-five years of work with the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene.

We believe that a wide circle of her friends and fellow workers would wish to pay a public tribute to the magnificent work she has accomplished and would like to join in a presentation to her, as a mark of appreciation of the inspiration, courage and devotion which she has brought to her work for the association for Moral and Social Hygiene for a quarter of a century. It is proposed to take advantage of this occasion to make a presentation to Miss Neilans and those who desire to subscribe are asked to send a gift of from one to twenty shillings to the Dowager Lady Nunburnholme, 7 Green Street, W1.